into bondage and servitude today. you can have a victim of sex trafficking in western europe. the immediate economic consequence of this, appreciation and cost, it is an increase in return on investment, particularly when tied to the fact that you can exploit people in dozens of industries. the old world, calculated, roughly 15% or 20% return on investment. today, 300% or 400%. it might be well beyond that. the duration of exploitation has changed. because of a large capital investments and the slow return, you could maintain and exploit people across the lifetimes. today, six months, one year, a couple years, it is much shorter. of course, very importantly, centuries ago, you could legally own human being is. today, you cannot actually legally own human believe -- beings. i have already used a lot of terms, slavery, human trafficking, and i have not told you what they mean. the reason for that is that some of these terms, most of these terms remain unclear. there's a lot of debate whether you talk to prosecutors, law enforcement, people in the international arena as to what slavery means.
